A survey of academic and commercial approaches to transaction support in mobile computing environments

The need for information access and processing in mobile computing environments presents great challenges to database researchers. Apart from advances in wireless communications and device technology, new data management techniques are needed to provide a transparent interaction between fixed and mobile devices in global information systems. A key aspect is to provide a flexible and powerful transaction processing infrastructure that takes into account the peculiarities of mobile computing. Mobile transaction processing shall be able to transparently deal with frequent disconnections and occasional movements of mobile devices. This paper surveys the mobile transaction models proposed in academia and outlines the state-of-the-art of transaction processing in commercial mobile databases